28Dry-Plate Tintypes made from Digital Negatives, created with expired emulsion, old coated plates and cast off materials, 2014, 4" x 5" (each)

It Is a Common Thread Through Out Life: 28

In 1972, Historian John Kouwenhoven announced during a lecture that we were “living in a snapshot world.” Since then, snapshots have become progressively more prevalent in our lives, providing us with a visual language with which to communicate. It alsoaffords us, as viewers, an opportunity to create something new and unique to ourselves.

While endeavoring to unravel the meaning within how we interact with photographs, I have created a piece that compiles 28 individual experiences had with a single photograph. 28 is a collective piece that is comprised of twenty-eight individual,4” x 5” tintype, self portraits.

Today, one of the most common photographic approaches seen in everyday photography is the “selfie.” In the current culture we tend to take more photographs of ourselves than other people take of us, allowing each of us to control the documentation of how we are represented. With that said, we are limited when it comes to how those images are received by others. A photograph offers an individualized experience to the viewer, no matter the time spent looking or “reading” the image. I find this “individualized definition” or “created story” imposed upon images to be one of the most universal interactions occurring with photographs, specifically portraits. This quote by author and historian Alan Trachtenberg has been highly influential to my work and thinking over the past three years: “ . . . while the camera has undeniably altered our sense of the past by showing us the actual look ofthings and persons (with the limits, of course, of adjustments of lens, light and perspective imposed by the photographer), there is still the question of how we make sense of what we see.” It is this question of “how we make sense of what we see,” thatspurred this piece.

In 28, each photograph attempts to make sense out of a single negative or original image. When we look at a photograph each person who views it perceives it differently. We instinctively read our own individualized story into each image, based on personal life experiences and connotations.